Not a digital marketing agency, rather experienced professionals passionate about social media and specialising in content creation and communication strategy.

Apr 12

How to Leverage Events on Social Media

As we are currently in Thailand and today is the start of Songkran (Thai New Year), we thought now would be a great time to write a blog about using social media to promote an event, be it a festival, concert, product launch, press conference, etc.

If you’re a keen social media user for business, here are our five top tips to promote your event and maximise engagement:

1] Know the buzz

Online tools such as Social Mention, Addict-o or Social Crawlytics allow you to monitor use of words, phrases, and hashtags, positive and negative sentiment around posts, related keywords and top users. Let these platforms do the hard work for you and concentrate on making your content more engaged and connected. Also monitor during the event to see what viral hashtags, memes, photos, etc come up.

2] Do your homework

Videos generally get more engagement on Facebook than YouTube! Links display very well in Facebook and allow you to upload your own thumbnails. Images work across most social channels very well. Do your research. Use Facebook groups, find the best hashtags for Twitter and Instagram, and look at what times are the best to post using built-in analytical tools or platforms, such as FollowerWonk and TweetLift.

3] Identify influencers

Check out festival or event pages for the hashtags they use, and look for accounts posting regularly using them. If you can engage with these accounts and build some rapport beforehand, they’re more likely to share your content if you tag them in once the event is up and running. Getting content shared by influential accounts will help increase your post reach and engagement.

4] Keep powered

You don’t want your phone juice running out any time soon, so buy a rechargeable USB battery pack, put your phone onto power saving mode, turn off all unnecessary connectivity such as Wi-Fi when the phones not in use, and put your screen brightness on the lowest setting. Whilst solar chargers and recharge points are available at some events nowadays, they can be pricey and entail lengthy queuing.

5] Schedule your posts

You can upload content to your favourite channels using scheduling tools, these allow you to post a lot in one go and then turn your device off. Facebook allows you to do this from within the ‘Pages Manager’ app. For Instagram and Twitter try the Crowdfire app ‘TakeOff’ feature, which allows smart scheduling of posts at the optimal time and suggests relevant hashtags. If you prefer something free, you can’t beat Buffer, Hootsuite or SproutSocial.